Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pukunui" data-source="post: 8542075" data-attributes="member: 54629">I agree that the opening adventure is clunky. It wasn't part of the closed playtest packet, and it shows. They write these adventures for shorter level spans and then someone comes along and says, "No, you have to make this playable from level 1", so they add in a little starter adventure to fill the gap. (Same thing happened with Curse of Strahd, which was originally intended for levels 8-11 only.)I ran other adventures before segueing into Storm King's Thunder. I did use the cloud giant in the Mickey Mouse tower, but I had him show up during a prior adventure as the result of a magic bean-produced beanstalk. He was able to give the PCs some SKT foreshadowing and they saved him from the air cultists (whom I had show up later during SKT). The PCs befriended him because there wasn't that whole "Why would we talk to a cloud giant after defending a town that was attacked by cloud giants?" thing.I had set up the PCs as Lords' Alliance agents (to make the whole "Lords' Alliance agents killed the giant queen" red herring more personal). I ran "Trouble in Red Larch" (the starter adventure from Princes of the Apocalypse) as them cleaning up the Red Larch area in an attempt to convince the town to join the Alliance (to help make the road safer). I then ran Scourge of the Sword Coast as another Lords' Alliance mission. After that, they got sent to Goldenfields to respond to a request for help from the Lords' Alliance agent there, and that set the SKT ball rolling. They went on the long and winding side quests from that area. Some of my players are Skyrim fans so they loved the open world nature of that part of the adventure.Later, I had them meet up with Harshnag via their Lords' Alliance handler. He suggested they find some giant artifacts to take as tribute to the oracle (so they wouldn't have to come and go). I also had the dragon cultists show up with their airship early. Some of my players had previously played in my Tyranny of Dragons campaign, so they enjoyed that cameo.I did end up with an extended side quest as the players wanted to find one of the other control rods for the Wyrmskull Throne. I ended up having them travel the Underdark to find Gravenhollow, where they learned that the Xanathar had one in its possession. I used the Xanathar's lair from Dragon Heist for that. They were then able to return to Maelstrom and free Serissa without having to fight Iymrith first.It turned out to be a pretty epic campaign, and the players absolutely loved it. I wouldn't mind running it again.</blockquote>

Verification